UPD: Greek Minister to use “legal force” and pay civil servants according to “performance”

Correction: KTG corrects the original title of this post. “legal force” replaces “legal violence”. It looks as if the Focus article was misinterpreted from the Greek news websites translating the word “Gewalt” with “βία”/violence.

I may do further corrections in this post in the morning.

Earlier KTG wrote:

Huh? Newly appointed Minister for Administrative Reform Kyriakos Mitsotakis threatened to use ‘violence’ – even though ‘legal’ – should civil servants refuse to obey his plans of a thorough reform of the Greek public administration.

He plans to pay civil servants according to performance (!). ” I will bring civil servants to be more flexible either in good or by using legal violence,” the aspiring great Greek reformer told German weekly Focus.

However he did not elaborate how exactly and who will measure and evaluate the ‘performance’ of the civil servants. He did not elaborate either if ‘signatures will be paid with one euro each, or other parts of his innovative and revolutionary project he has in mind, especially in times where the country’s public sector is to be trimmed down.

However it is the first time I hear of such a plan and I consider it weird that Mitsotakis revealed it to a German magazine.

But who is this innovation-eager minister, the German Focus praises as “a MacKinsey manager” – he worked there from 1995-1997? Kyriakos Mitsotakis, 49, is the son of veteran politician and former prime minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis, 94, one of the three most influential political families in Greece (that is: Karamanlis, Papandeou and Mitsotakis). Kyriakos is the brother of former Foreign, Culture Minister and ex Athens mayor Dora Bakoyiannis. He is also uncle of her son Costas who is mayor in Karpenisi.

A family of state-money earners? Possible. Main thing is one has the will and the plans to proceed and enforce structural reforms. With or without violence 🙂

PS As Mitsotakis, Focus and KTG, we all speak and understand German, we shouldn’t expect any denial in the form of “my statement was taken out of the context” or “I was misquoted” or “I had too much frappe” and/or things like that.

He did indeed. Kyriakos Mitsotakis dismissed the Focus’ ‘legal violence’ statement. The minister’s office issued a statement Monday noon saying that “Mr Mitsotakis never made such or a similar statement neither to Focus nor to any other media.”

Correction: KTG corrects the original title of this post “legal violence” to “legal force”.

2 comments

probably even Mitsotakis did not know that and dismissed he made such a statement. I don’t know who sent the news from Germany to Greece but “Gewalt/βια/violence” was all over the Greek internet and news websites this morning.